The publication of Sordello (1840) did not improve Browning’s position with the public.  The poem was a challenge to the understanding of an aspirant reader, and the challenge met with no response.  An excuse for not reading a poem of five or six thousand lines is grateful to so infirm and shortlived a being as man.  And, indeed, a prophet, if prudent, may do well to postpone the privilege of being unintelligible until he has secured a considerable number of disciples of both sexes.  The reception of Sordello might have disheartened a poet of less vigorous will than Browning; he merely marched breast forward, and let Sordello lie inert, until a new generation of readers had arisen.  The dramas, King Victor and King Charles and The Return of the Druses (at first named “Mansoor the Hierophant”) now occupied his thoughts.  Short lyrical pieces were growing under his hand, and began to form a considerable group.  And one fortunate day as he strolled alone in the Dulwich wood—­his chosen resort of meditation—­“the image flashed upon him of one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it."[22] In other words Pippa had suddenly passed her poet in the wood.

A cheap mode of issuing his works now in manuscript was suggested to Browning by the publisher Moxon.  They might appear in successive pamphlets, each of a single sheet printed in double-column, and the series might be discontinued at any time if the public ceased to care for it.  The general title Bells and Pomegranates was chosen; “beneath upon the hem of the robe thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about.”  Browning, as he explained to his readers in the last number, meant to indicate by the title, “Something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought”—­such having been, in fact, one of the most familiar of the Rabbinical interpretations designed to expound the symbolism of this priestly decoration prescribed in “Exodus.”  From 1841 to 1846 the numbers of Bells and Pomegranates successively appeared; with the eighth the series closed.  The first number—­Pippa Passes—­was sold for sixpence; when King Victor and King Charles was published in the following year (1842), the price was raised to one shilling.  The third and the seventh numbers were made up of short pieces—­Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845). The Return of the Druses and A Blot in the ’Scutcheon—­Numbers 4 and 5—­followed each other in the same year 1843. Colombe’s Birthday—­the only number which is known to survive in manuscript—­came next in order (1844).  The last to appear was that which included Luna, Browning’s favourite